Jay Friedlander
acss/acsee 2014 featured presenter
College of the Atlantic, USA
Impact entrepreneur, academic and strategy consultant to Fortune 100 companies, Jay Friedlander is making sustainability strategic. From his experiences as a natural and organic food entrepreneur and teaching sustainable enterprise, Jay created the Abundance Cycle™ to merge sustainability and business strategy. The model is actionable, providing businesses with new perspectives as well as a clear pathway forward. The Abundance Cycle™ builds on competitive strengths and weaves in the latest tactics enterprises are using across the globe to maximize abundance for shareholders, the planet and society. Jay is the Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine and founder of a vanguard sustainable business program. The College has been repeatedly cited as a leader in sustainability and Jay’s work has been covered in Fast Company, Princeton Review, CNN, Chronicle of Higher Education, Entrepreneur, Triple Pundit, Fortune, Money and other media. Jay also serves on the entrepreneurship faculty of Babson College. Jay is a frequent speaker on merging sustainable innovation and enterprise. He has given talks to business and academic groups in the United States, as well as New Zealand, Australia, and the European Union. Jay holds a BA from Colgate University and an MBA from Babson College, where he graduated as Valedictorian. When not ensconced in the Abundance Cycle™, Jay enjoys cooking, hiking in Acadia National Park and traveling with his wife Ursula and their son Max. Featured Speech: Strategic Sustainability: Creating Abundant Enterprises
Featured Speech Friday, June 13, 2014 09:15-10:00 Conference Hall 12F
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We are entering an age where sustainable companies will reign supreme. Reams of evidence from books like Conscious Capitalism, to articles in the Harvard Business Review, to studies tracking stock market returns show that companies integrating social and environmental perspectives are outperforming their peers, even during the 2008 financial crisis. Yet despite the importance of sustainability most business leaders stumble on how to align sustainable tactics to create competitive advantage. Strategic sustainability offers a solution to the language barriers and otherwise haphazard implementation of sustainability initiatives recently highlighted in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Boston Consulting Group report on “Sustainability’s Next Frontier.” The study found that while nearly two-thirds of survey respondents felt sustainability was important to their businesses, only 10% of companies said they fully tackle sustainability related issues. Linking sustainability and business strategy was a key difference in whether or not companies made gains from sustainable practices. Using case studies from around the globe, this presentation explores the Abundance Cycle™, an actionable model merging business strategy with sustainability principles. The Abundance Cycle™ provides a strategic framework that simultaneously enhances competitive advantage, builds value for shareholders, strengthens society and improves the environment. Business and academic leaders interested in the following questions should attend: • Why are we entering the economic age of sustainability? • How does sustainability in commerce move beyond a zero-sum game to build abundance for all stakeholders? • How can strategic sustainability create social and environmental abundance offer a new perspective for enterprises that unlocks innovation, cuts costs and grows sales?